The new drive is meant to be an upgrade to the Vertex 4, and not a replacement for the company's current top-notch Vector drive. Nonetheless, the new drive shares a lot of characteristics with the Vector.

Barefoot controller and 20nm NAND
Unlike the Vertex 4, which uses the Indilinx Everest 2 controller, the Vertex 450 uses the new Indilinx Barefoot 3 series controller, model BF3-M10. This controller was first used in the Vector and made that drive one of the fastest SSDs currently on the market.

Vertex 450's controller, however, is set to run at a lower clock speed and it uses less-expensive 20nm lithography NAND flash memory, as opposed to the 25nm NAND used in both the Vector the and Vertex 4. This translates into a new drive that's more balanced in the trade-off between cost and performance.

Despite that, OCZ assures the world that the new drive will offer significantly faster performance than the Vertex 4 and just slightly behind the Vector. The company also says the Vertex 450 will offer "superior" sustained performance over a long period of operation.

OCZ says the affordable Vertex 450 is close to its top-notch Vector drive in performance, and comparable to other high-end SSDs on the market.
Dong Ngo

In all, with the release of the Vertex 450, it seems OCZ wants to introduce a new tier of SSDs that's a cross between budget and high-end.

Standard design, fine-tuned features
The new OCZ Vertex 450 comes in the now-standard 7mm, 2.5-inch design and shares the looks of the Vertex 4. The drive supports SATA 3 (6Gbps) and is backward-compatible with previous revisions of the SATA standard.

The drive doesn't support overprovisioning, but does support 256-bit AES-compliant data encryption and TRIM command, and sports an advanced suite of flash management, promising to offer increased durability and reliability. (Read more about the features of SSDs here.) However, it comes with only a three-year warranty, which is decent but shorter than the five-year warranties offered with some other drives.

Like other OCZ SSDs, the new Vertex 450 drive comes with a 3.5-inch drive bay caddy included to make it fit easily in a desktop computer's chassis. The drive will work anywhere regular hard drives of the SATA standard are used.

The new OCZ Vertex 450 SSD is available now in three capacities, 128GB, 256GB, and 512GB, at suggested retail prices of $130, $235, and $500, respectively. This is already very competitive pricing but you can expect the actual street price to be even slightly lower.

About The Author

CNET editor Dong Ngo has been involved with technology since 2000, starting with testing gadgets and writing code for CNET Labs' benchmarks. He now manages CNET San Francisco Labs, reviews 3D printers, networking/storage devices, and also writes about other topics from online security to new gadgets and how technology impacts the life of people around the world.